One more day of drizzly, overcast, perfect gardening weather.
With talkshoe and webex, as part of the NYFA sponsored project, "Gulf to Gulf," 4: PM ET Thursday April 9, 2009 I will host the second Virtual Concert II event with Dr. Michele Dionne, Director of Research at the Wells National Research Reserve, Wells, Maine, Marda Kirn, Director of the EcoartNetwork, Boulder, CO.,Dr. Dr. Don Krug, Chair of the Education Department at the University of British Columbia at Vancouver, Daisy Morton, assistant, Vinalhaven, Maine, Dr. Jim White, Director of the INSTAAR Institute, University of Colorado at Boulder, CO. and myself. We will review and discuss known and new information about global warming in the world's gulf region, from the Camargues and Bangladesh to New Orleans in the Gulf of Mexico.
I admit, after the first time, the first Virtual Concert II, I'm anxious. The first Virtual Concert II was for the Blaze Anthology of Feminist Writing panel hosted from Boston and moderated by Karen Frostig. We had some tech glitches to put it mildly and was probably over-ambitious. March 6 2009, From Lesley University, Boston, we linked Ruth Wallen from San Diego, with ten panelists for the Blaze panel, Daisy in NYC and (unexpectedly) only one functional hard drive at Lesley. It recorded semi-fine on talkshoe, where you can listen to the imperfect archive but not so fine in webex. I've learned a lot since then and am looking forward to a more effective recording of exciting material April 9.
The "Gulf to Gulf" project uses desktop sharing technology to look at the changes effected by global warming between the Gulf of Mexico and the Gulf of Maine, with a focus on New Orleans. The ultimate goal is affecting public policy. This is a public art event, simultaneously recorded on webex and in talkshoe live. Next week, Jim and I will be talking with Tuku Ahmed of Bangladesh, now a cabdriver in New York City.
Today, on Vinalhaven, we are fog bound. The air is still and perfumed after the rain storm last night.
The first snowdrops and crocuses are blooming in my garden.
Soon it will be time to plant peas.
I recently discovered Facebook and find it easier to post there than on my own blog. I confess it's because there are other people around. It doesn't feel as lonely. I just posted 3 photo albums there: about going to New Orleans, my Maine studio and Push Pull at LACMA last spring. I'm still a bit confused about what goes where on the net.
Here I can post in more depth about my own concerns. Primary right now are the Bush efforts to hamstring our future with his political appointees, as NOAA and legislative roll backs on critical legislation, as endangered species. It's hard to fathom if the man has any understanding or integrity at all but that's not my concern. My concern is how the new administration can put things back together. This Tuesday, Hannah Pingree will be on the Virtual Concerts and I shall ask her exactly that. Pingree is the Majority Leader for the Maine House of Representatives and daughter of Chellie Pingree, newly elected to the US Senate.
The US Supreme Court just ruled that the Navy can conduct sonar tests despite clear evidence of damage to whales, dolphins and other sea creatures. I hope the international court takes us to court over this. California, whose coast this concerns has recently passed a farm animal protection bill and Spain has addressed specism. Isn't it time to put Manifest Destiny on trial?
The artist Bonita Ely has sent me a link to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Nov 11, 2008 program on lost drift nets, ghostnets in the Gulf of Carpinteria in Northern Australia. As is happening globally, the lost & discarded gear of foreign, mostly southeast Asian, particularly Thai, fishing fleets has wadded up in enormous balls. The largest found so far: 6 kilometres, weighing 6 tons and 6 metres deep.
http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2008/s2415642.htm
The ghostnets kill mostly turtles, but also lots of birds, endangered fish as well as being threats to local small fishing boats manned by indigenous people.
It's hard (painful, wearying) for me to comment on these nets. For twenty years, ghostnets has been the moniker for the core of all my work: Ghost Nets, the project. I can still rage at their existence, despair at the short sightedness of people who use them and extrapolate about the implications for all the habits and routines of thinking and behavior that permits this horror and is reflected in so many other aspects of social and cultural norms. They have been outlawed in many places but ocean currents wash them up from illegal or simply unregulated boats to be deposited wherever the tides take them. I can still be sadly reminded of how apt the metaphor is.
What I can say that's positive, is that there are cadres of volunteers trying to clean them up. Gary Luchi of the Carpenteria Ghostnets Program wants to initiate educational programs in the countries of origin for these deadly nets and invite volunteers to come help clean them up. One day walking the beaches and seeing dead animals entwined in the monofilament wires may speak louder than anything else.
Since the election, I have felt a great sense of elation and deflation. The elation is that the Republican corruption and mis-management is at least temporarily purged; that youthful idealism and hope once more has a place in this democracy. The deflation is what a big job is ahead and the fact that all the same problems prevail.
One of those problems is the difficulty of being heard with innovative thinking. Al Gore posted a long editorial in the NY Times Sunday, listing what the administration needs to do to address global warming. It was shockingly tame. It included obvious points such as low emission cars. It did not mention the potential of art to introduce entire fresh thinking.
It was my honor to work with Dr. Jim White of the INSTAAR Institute and the Unversity of Colorado at Boulder, in 2007, to create "Trigger Points/ Tipping Points," an installation and DVD for the "Weather Report" show at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art in Boulder. Now we are planning to resume work in January 2009. In our original project, we compared conflict zones in three deltaic systems impacted by global warming and climate change: Darfur in relation to the Nile, Bangladesh in relation to the Ganges and New Orleans in relation to the Mississippi. We are not sure where we will go now. Our goals are to break some new ground and open some doors and windows in how to think aboutt he problems ahead.
In sum, it's a heartening time despite the mountain of ecological problems to address. I sense in colleagues, that we are all entering a new era of possibility in the face of our challenges. May it be so.
These three were moderated today by John Roberts of CNN @ Columbia today and I understand it will air in a week or two- before the election on the EI. website. If you aren’t familiar with these names, Soros & Roubini predicted the current crash years ago and advocate a sustainable economic system based on natural resource sustainability. Soros bankrolled the Clintons and is now backing Obama. Basically, amongst other things, they said if McCain gets it, it will be the “end of the world” as we know it because everything will take a bottomless wrong turn crash of a cliff of economic fallacies. What we need, they said, is seeing the big picture and a skeptical attitude. In any case, tho we‘ve hit the economic bottom, the hard-landing fall out will probably continue to play out for as much as 24 mons as consumerism comes to a grinding halt globally. Unemployment, for example, now at 6.5% may soon hit 9%. The entire (excellent) session will be on the Earth Institute website by Tues. (see link below). I was able to ask the first question, introduced myself by name and as an ecological artist:
“First, I hope you run this every day on CNN until the election (which got applause & laughter). What you’re describing, in terms of a biological parallel, in disturbance theory, is that we’ve gone past oscillations to a baseline change, an opportunity for major change. Nothing is better at showing the big picture with skepticism than art. In an ideal world, I can ask this question as an artist, if Obama wins, what would a team look like that could address this whole mess?”
Soros, Roberts and Roubini perked up.
Roubini answered that he agreed about art’s role and that the real answer was in re-thinking how we invest (in sustainable systems.) Afterwards I introduced myself and he warmly added that he wanted to tell me he collects art. So, the upshot in terms of our dialog, is that now more people know there’s such a thing as ecological art and that there may be a connection to crisis policy. I gave him my card. Roubini will be testifying to the US Congress next week.
Monday, October 20
Environmental and Sustainable Development Programs Open House
The trip I took to New Orleans and Baton Rouge, esp in the light of Gustav was incredible for what I saw of the continuing devastation & grief and the courage & spirit of those addressing & solving problems. A good outcome of Gustav seems to be national attention to the ongoing & outstanding problems there, arguably at a time when we are all more aware of the global issues of global warming that are contributing to the regions woes (and opportunities).
The conference on sustainable deltaic modeling at LSU was amazing for the range of addresses to the local problems of wetlands restoration in the face in increased hurricane activity. I took 33 pages of notes from both days (see excerpt below).
New friends from the region and friends here who live in New Orleans during the winter have been in touch, comparing thoughts since Gustav. I also have several hundred photos from the trip and I hope to do a couple Virtual Concerts with folks I met. The first is scheduled for September 16.
I felt the scientists struggled with how ecological artists can be part of the solution. Artists as illustrators is familiar but not artists as equal partners to designing solutions. It helped when I used the word, "dirt." Then they were puzzled but enthusiastically intrigued.
Generally what I saw, was the extent to which New Orleans is a paradigm for the realities of how we must adapt to our dependence on natural resources if we are to survive what is now being called the anthropicene age. I also got lots of reminders of WHY the region so interests me. The solution, to which I think we as artists can pro-actively contribute, is in designing, as Dr Denise Reed particularly inferred in her talk at LSU, for the human infrastructure around the dynamics of a hurricane based (wetlands) ecology world wide.
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Everyone I spoke to is aware of the difficulties in implementing solutions. Local business people-politicos are now extremely engaged in the (excellent) science being done. Former Gov Blanco spoke to us the first night of the conference (Monday). She continues to push, even out of office to find acceptable compromises between oil interests and ecological imperatives. She stated that had she knowm, she would have told Pres George Bush up front from the beginning, that reconstrcution would cost $50 billion.
New Orleans is the most important port in this country for oil & gas. Those industries have devastated the incredibly rich ecosystem, which also happens to be the one of the most fecund deltaic systems in the world (most migratory birds in the North American continent need the system at some point for their life cycle).
Onshore oil and gas production during the 1960's and '70's devastated the natural ecosystems. That work accelerated subsidence. Oil and gas exploration canals and pipelines dissected right thru wetlands and barrier islands. This altered local hydrology, creating new pathways for saltwater intrusion. The combined effects of these processes made the city more vulnerable to the increasingly more powerful storms we've been seeing.
Coastal oil and gas production in coastal Louisiana has probably resulted in ten percent or more of the land loss problem. But fees and severance taxes from oil and gas production now comprise the major source of funding for the restoration effort.
It is interesting that these extractive industries have figured out that it is in their interest to restore what they have destroyed. Without necessary restoration work, they will have no platform from which to operate. Paradoxically, the perpetrators of local degradation are now making amends by being the largest source of funding for restoration work. But many suspect the catch-22 between ecosystem fragility and extractive processes makes it impossible to go as far as is necessary.
An unexpected problem seems to be the plethora of planners & community people trying to input into comprehensive plans, with sentimental attachments & variegated education about the natural resource issues. The local & federal politics are immensely complex & Byzantine, small-townish, caught up in feudal family histories, racial tensions, etc along with the exacerbated routine Republican vs Democratic stuff. Ironically, the Repub governor seems to be doing a good job, by all accounts. The Army Corps, is divided between local officials who are fairly aware of what needs to be done & eager to do it and federal level offices, which hamstrings them.
Administrative red tape is apparently the largest problem of all, endlessly delaying critical earmarked funding. For that reason, activism has stepped into the breach with good effect. My observation was that it's too simplistic, at least for New Orleans, to place blame or laurels on any demographic- whether business, science, art, community activists or politicians. Yes, there are a few individual villains, but mostly the problems are caused by personal/human issues and agendas that everyone seems to trip over.
The heroes are those who show up & keep plugging away at the solutions and coalitions that need to form and in many cases, have formed. The place of artists in this mix is a major uphill battle. I don't know how much Dan Cameron will chip away at that with his projected biennale. I do know that this situation tests the old-fashioned notion of artists (or anyone) as the white knight. The solution will be in the success of a pretty jumbled mosaic. What is most interesting to me, is that many of those models for solutions are essentially indigenous ones, as the design solutions are as well, for example, building on stilts. The science is good and scientists and NGO’s know they need artists but many are also pretty hide-bound so far in conceiving of how that will work.
Modeling plays a big role because it is the leverage to illustrate do-nothing consequences. I think LSU will be taking a major role in bridging some of the divides. They have initiated a new school of coastal environmental sciences and were open to discussing how artists could be involved.
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